


Could be better

by cillafix



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Desperation, Friendship, Gen, Omorashi, Pee, Road Trips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-13
Updated: 2017-05-13
Packaged: 2018-10-31 09:34:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10896582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cillafix/pseuds/cillafix
Summary: A delay on an ill-advised Russian road trip comes at a bad time for Otabek in particular. I mean... look at the tags ya know what this is lmao





	Could be better

**Author's Note:**

> Previously posted on my Tumblr (the-kittyscarf). Go talk to me about headcanons and watch me whine about writen ✌

Yuuri shrieked as icy rain and bits of hail sprayed into the car from the window behind him for a couple of seconds.

“YuriOH. Quit that,” Viktor said with almost fatherly sternness.

“I was just throwing away a cup.”

“Must we be so environmentally unfriendly?”

“Why not? It’s Katsudon’s first Authentic Russian Road Trip, I’m keeping it authentic,” Yurio said, scooting far enough down in his seat to put his feet all the way on the back of the passenger seat, almost on the other Yuuri’s shoulder. He had hoped to get a laugh out of Otabek, but his quiet friend in the opposite seat had been staring out the window and shrugging off any attempts at conversation for a while now.

Without taking his eyes off the road, Viktor gently pushed Yurio’s feet off the seat. Since they’d driven into the storm, his usually high spirits seemed to have fallen along with the visibility and traffic speed.

“Viktor? Can’t we find somewhere to stop?” Otabek spoke up once everyone had recovered from the latest disruption.

“Yeah, yeah, of course,” Viktor said. “Yuuri, would you be so helpful and look up whether we have any chance of taking a break soon?”

“Sure.” Yuuri fiddled with his maps app for a minute. “What is this? It’s only 16 kilometers away.” Viktor glanced at the phone for a fraction of a second.

“Oh! Perfect! Big, new travel stop with a cafe. Get a cup of tea and calm down before we go back out in this. We’re all saved,” Viktor exclaimed. Yurio was sure he’d been taken on this drive in early childhood, but it must have been so interminable he’d blocked out most of the memories. Finding an actual, modern travel stop would be the best thing that had happened all day. Their stops so far had ranged from a village cafe where they shared the one table with a tiny grandma and her four sisters who loved to ask young men awkward questions, to a dilapidated fuel station where even the two employees had to use a nearby abandoned building as a toilet.

“16 kilometers, you two, that’s doable,” Viktor looked over his shoulder into the back seat and added.

“Got it.” Otabek leaned back toward the window. Yurio eyed him suspiciously and wrote him an SMS.

**say something**

Otabek startled slightly, checked the message and wrote a response without making eye contact. Yurio eagerly checked the reply.

**Woof woof, do you want me to roll over next**

**no i want you to converse with me before i die of boredom**

**K I feel like Siri. What can I help you with**

**what the hell are you talking about you seem really uncomfortable**

This time, Otabek shrugged at Yurio with a “what do you want me to do” sort of expression, pointedly tapped out a response and turned a few degrees further away.

**That is probably because I’m really uncomfortable**

Oh, so he’d been acting all moody because he had to piss and had only just gotten around to saying something about it? Did Otabek try to be this dramatic, or was it just a gift? _Whatever, I don’t wanna know,_ Yurio thought, _at least he’ll go back to normal in a few minutes._

 **ok sorry i asked** , Yurio wrote, but paused before sending. Maybe that was too serious, he didn’t want to get all awkward. He erased the entire sentence - **smartass** , he retyped, then hesitated again. He’d clearly said something to make Otabek self-conscious, maybe he should be a bit sorry he asked.

**ok smartass sorry i asked**

“Vitya!” Yuuri cried out in alarm again. Viktor threw his arm in front of Yuuri and braked to a stop abruptly.

“Wow, alright then. Herbal teas all around when we get to the travel stop,” Viktor said.

“What do you think is happening?”

“I wish I could tell you. It’s probably an accident.” Nothing beyond the brake lights of the car in front of them was visible through the pouring sleet.

“Somebody hit a bear with their car. It happens all the time,” Yurio said.

“Yurio,” Viktor scolded. His tone probably made it clear to Yuuri that that did not, in fact, happen all the time.

“Katsudon, you’re an idiot for agreeing to his ideas. I’m an idiot for not flying and meeting you there. Viktor, I don’t even have to tell you what you are.”

“It’s never a bad time for quality time together, though. And no baggage restrictions.”

“Like I’ll need a bottle of leave-in conditioner when we die of starvation out here,” Yurio grumbled. “By the way, Beka, you’re an idiot for knowing we were doing this and visiting us anyway.”

Otabek made some vague, noncommital noise, nodded and ran his hand through his hair. Yurio remembered to check his phone, and found one new message.

**It’s fine. Sorry about that, I realize we don’t need any more sarcasm in here, but tbh I am pretty distracted**

-

Five minutes later, the car was in park and all seatbelts had come off.

Twenty-five minutes later, Viktor and Yuuri had turned the radio back on despite already knowing it wasn’t useful for much, and had paused between stations to discuss a combination of awful 00s Europop and a post-apocalyptic, static-filled weather report.

“Oh my god. Let’s record this and pair skate to it.”

“YES.”

“Yakov would kill you.”

“That’s half the fun.”

“Could this trip get any worse?” Yurio said under his breath to the ceiling, pressing his headphones harder against his ears with both hands. As much as Otabek hated to let himself get annoyed with Yurio - sometimes he had to admit the kid’s filter could use work, but outspokenness was hardly a disadvantageous trait to have, after all - he couldn’t help but fill up with resentment, not least because he was fairly sure Yurio wasn’t having a worse time than him.

Being an unobtrusive travel companion came naturally to Otabek. Complaining about an external circumstance would never make it resolve faster, and he wouldn’t think of giving any impression of frustration - that could potentially put guilt on the driver, who had no more control than anyone else.

But this was getting excessive and Otabek’s ability to keep it discreet was eroding. Even sitting with his full weight in his seat put pressure on his overstretched bladder, and when the discomfort became too sharp, he’d had to lean slightly with one hand propping him up. He knew his posture would look unnatural, and he had to do what he had to do, but he hoped he didn’t seem impatient. Even though impatient didn’t begin to cover how urgently he wanted to get out of the car, find somewhere private and relieve himself. And maybe if he had an estimate of how many more minutes he had to wait, he’d have found that some kind of reassurance, but the thought of not being ten minutes closer to anywhere in ten minutes made the walls close in.

Otabek heard his name mentioned in the front seat and abruptly straightened his posture. Viktor and Yuuri had exhausted all the entertainment value they could get from the radio pretty quickly, and the conversation had shifted to something more related to the current predicament.

“I said, how are you doing back there?” Viktor asked, leaning around the front seat.

“Could be better,” Otabek admitted.

“Could be worse, I hope?”

“…sure.”

Otabek felt like sinking into the floor. He hadn’t seen any way not to answer that question truthfully, but he shouldn’t have said anything to make it a question in the first place, really. By the time the traffic moved, everyone would want a toilet break anyway and he’d get the stop he wanted, and if he’d kept quiet for just a few more minutes, he’d have found out there was no point. He’d have been no better off, but at least nobody would have been concerned about him, which didn’t help.

Unable to sit still for another second, he scooted back in his seat and attempted to cross one leg over the other - a mistake, this only constricted the increasing fullness and he ended up shuddering in pain with both feet back on the floor and Yurio glancing over to see what was going on. Yurio didn’t bother taking his headphones off, but he gave Otabek a slightly questioning look, to which Otabek rapidly shook his head. Yurio gave an almost imperceptible nod and turned away again. At least Yurio only knew how to give sympathy of the “that’s rough” rather than “are you going to be okay” variety.

But absolutely no position seemed to help anymore, why would it when the problem was just too much liquid and no more space for it to expand, and nothing made Otabek more frustrated and embarrassed with himself than having to try to subtly shift every couple of minutes to distract his body from another attempt to override his will and get rid of the problem. He was already on the edge of attracting attention, and if it got much worse, what would he end up having to do to withstand it?

He could not jump to conclusions, though. If he couldn’t say or do anything, he would have to get through this minute by minute until the traffic moved and they reached their scheduled stop - he knew he could do more than he thought he physically could if strictly necessary. And if there was no alternative, thinking about the alternative wasn’t an option.

-

This would not go down as one of Viktor’s proudest moments. When you decide to take your fiance on a gratuitous road trip on a notoriously dodgy route you could have easily flown instead - and drag your protege with you for some character building, and, what the hell, convince his friend to come along so he’ll have company too - you expect an adventure and maybe a few light misadventures. And while they’d certainly had the usual confusing detours and run-ins with odd characters, it didn’t feel like there would be any laughs looking back at this part.

Viktor had made a valiant effort to keep the mood in the car from souring for hours, but stress had taken over and made his job difficult. Even before the traffic had stopped, he’d spent the last fifty kilometers squinting and following the taillights of the cars ahead of them as the sides of the road disappeared. And after, well, that was pretty self-explanatory.

Poor Yuuri had finally become unresponsive to Viktor’s attempts at diversions and gone withdrawn and despairing, and Viktor could practically see the sloppily-drawn storm cloud floating over Yurio’s head. And then there was Otabek, who had been about as convenient to travel with all day as not having a fourth person in the car at all - if anything, his calming presence and ability to temper Yurio made the total feel like about two and a half when the going was smooth - but was now obviously trying not to unravel. Viktor had noted earlier for no real reason that Otabek was usually the last one to come back with a travel cup of tea when they stopped and the first one out of the car the following time, but still, poor thing didn’t deserve to be miserable, he must not have expected a wrench in the routine. Who hadn’t been there before?

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Yurio said when his phone rang on the back seat.

“Do NOT- ugh, okay,” Otabek tried to protest, but resigned when Yurio answered it anyway.

“I’m interrupting the song I’ve had on repeat for half an hour for this, Mila, what do you want?” Yurio asked, holding the phone at arm’s length propped on the passenger seat so the camera could see him.

“Yura! Heeeeeeeey! Aren’t you guys here yet?” Mila’s sunny disposition greeted them.

“No, we’re- will you please cut that out? Wait, why are you speaking English to me?”

“Why not? Is Viktor’s Yuuri not with you guys?”

“Yeah, so?”

“So I have manners, unlike some people. What’s going on? I just heard that traffic has stopped for miles because of a bad wreck blocking the motorway.”

“We know.”

“Oh. You’re in it, aren’t you? How long have you been stuck?”

“Nice deductive skills. I don’t know, forty-ish minutes?”

“Oooooh, that sucks. I hope you get out soon. Who’s driving? The weather is horrible, and it’s probably worse out there.”

“Here. Everyone say hi to Mila.” Yurio turned the phone toward the front seat.

“Hey, Mila,” Yuuri obliged.

“We’ll be there tonight, but it may be a couple more hours in this weather, even after we get out,” Viktor explained.

“Ah, the mom friends in the front, perfect,” Mila said. “What about Beka, isn’t he there?”

“Right here.” Yurio pointed the camera at Otabek, who courteously waved at Mila. “I don’t think he really feels like talking right now.”

“What else is new?” she laughed. “Well, good luck. Call me when you get here even if it’s late, let’s have a movie night so I can see all your smiling faces.” Mila laid the sarcasm on thick, and Yurio didn’t miss it.

“Yup, can’t wait to see your _beautiful_ face either.”

“K, fuck you too. Bye.”

“Smell you later.”

Well, it was good to have a reminder that they’d get back to the real world eventually and somebody in it remembered they existed. Maybe Viktor and Yuuri could politely decline, leave the kids to have their movie night and get a good night’s sleep. Damn it, since when was he too old for the events of this day? What kind of harebrained idea was this?  
The hail began to pour twice as strongly, clattering against the windows. Sorry, did you think you were invincible?

-

Otabek couldn’t remember whether he’d been stupid enough to honestly believe necessity would make everything work out. The fact that everything he’d tried to convince himself wouldn’t get worse, did, seemed like a pretty clear indicator of what was left. Sitting still had become a complete impossibility, he’d resorted to twisting the ball of his foot into the floorboard, struggling to keep the motion slow and subtle, and the hand he wasn’t sitting on was almost constantly on his waistband trying to hold it slack. As he’d shut down more and more of the contractions that had threatened to make him piss full-force in his pants, that pain had gradually been replaced by the stabbing, spasming numbness of tension held for too long.

An hour earlier he’d brushed off some embarrassment when he was the first person to ask for another stop, the first to imply that, yes, finding a toilet was enough of a priority for him that he didn’t want to leave it up to everyone else’s schedule. To justify it to himself he’d had to put it off until he was sure it had been long enough that everyone else would appreciate the suggestion as well, because there’s hardly any shame in that, doesn’t somebody have to take initiative and decide where to stop next? There was no such explanation for not just practically deciding not to make one’s self wait any longer, but being unable to do so.

His concentration must have slipped, because before he even knew what was happening, he had leaked. He slammed his thighs together, gripped the edge of the seat so he wouldn’t grip anything else, and froze. Yes, this was actually going to happen, right then, in the rental car. Even without looking to his right, Otabek could tell Yurio had taken his headphones off, he had seen Otabek’s expression change to panic and was about to ask what was going on. Otabek could clearly see what his options were, and although thinking of any of them made him want to disappear, it was obvious which one would be the least humiliating.

“Please get me my coat.”

“Your coat? Why?” Yurio asked, about twice as loudly.

“Because I’m getting out.”

“Are you fucking crazy?”

“I don’t want to talk about it. Please give me the coat. It's somewhere behind me,” Otabek explained, avoiding eye contact and struggling to keep his voice level.

Yurio got up and bent himself at the waist over the back seat. “Ow, fuck you, why do I have to do this,” he complained, muffled by the pile of luggage.

“Whoa, whoa, what are we doing back there?” Viktor asked in alarm. If all went well, this would be the worst part.

“I have to… pee over there, I’m sorry,” Otabek said, aware of how bizarre he sounded saying something that crass.

“Oh no, don’t do that,” Yuuri muttered, wiping the condensation off his window and gazing out at the weather apprehensively.

“I understand, but please be careful,” Viktor said. Yurio emerged from behind the seat and flung a coat at Otabek. “Don’t go far. We literally can’t see the side of the road from here. I bet the people in the outer lane can barely see it.” Otabek scrambled into his coat and flipped his hood up. Almost there, this was about to be over and then he’d never have to talk about it again.

“Hey, look!” Yuuri exclaimed. Viktor spun back around toward the road - the taillights in front of them went creeping away.

“Oh! Great, that works too!” Viktor put the car back in drive and accelerated to catch up.

 _No, it doesn’t, it really, really doesn’t._ Otabek didn’t dare look down to see if the damage was visible from the outside, but the unmistakable wet sensation in his boxers had spread while he was trying to get into his coat.

“Viktor?” Yurio hesitated. “Don’t you think you should pull over as soon as we get past the wreck?” Otabek probably would have been proud of Yurio for showing some awkward concern for another person, if only it hadn’t been for him, and especially not when he already knew the answer.

“Pulling over before we get to the stop sounds like… erm…” Viktor trailed off. Even at this low speed, he was already leaning so his nose almost touched the steering wheel, as if that would help him see any features of the road beyond the car ahead of them.

“How you get into an accident in the first place in this weather?” Yuuri finished his sentence. “I mean. That may be a slight overstatement, but-”

“No, you may make the occasional slight overstatement, but that’s probably not a slight overstatement.”

The next time Otabek’s control faltered, he could no longer split his restraint between stopping the leak and acting inconspicuously, and didn’t manage to resist the urge to rapidly fan his legs. Yurio did not miss the significance of this uncharacteristic behavior.

“This is not good, I really think we should-”

“Please. Please be quiet. There isn’t anything Viktor can do. You’re not helping,” Otabek finally snapped at Yurio, his face buried in his hands.

“Woooooow, okay.” Yurio threw his hands up and turned away from Otabek.

“You two, I see the emergency lights, we’re about to go past the accident, and we were actually almost there before we had to stop,” Viktor said, his voice going higher.

Otabek couldn’t make himself say the things he was thinking and knew were true, not even as a warning or apology, that he wouldn’t make it, he was closer than _almost_ wetting himself, but the words wouldn’t come out. Willing to do anything to delay it until he could at least get out of the car, Otabek whipped his coat off one shoulder and draped it over his side so the others in the car wouldn’t see his hands in his lap (although imagining them knowing that was his motive was almost as bad.) Each lapse and subsequent effort to regain control tired him out and made it increasingly difficult not to give up, and the involuntary leaks seemed to have done nothing to alleviate the pressure.

Otabek thought he heard that they were pulling into the travel stop when the worst leak yet happened, seeping over and under his thighs. He tensed every inch of his body so hard he thought he’d turn himself inside out, but this time it wouldn’t stop.

“No, no, no, I’m sorry Viktor, I tried-” he trailed off. The car was slowing down, there were the bright windows of the building right in front of them. Otabek fumbled with the lock with shaking hands, threw the door open and flung himself out of the car.

-

Viktor emphatically put the car in park and looked at Yuuri wide-eyed and panting for a few seconds before slumping onto the steering wheel. Yuuri patted his thigh reassuringly, his hand having migrated there over the last few minutes - it wasn’t often he saw Viktor so stressed.

“We did it, we’re alive,” Viktor sighed.

“ _You_ did it,” Yuuri responded. He hadn’t understood Yurio and Otabek’s squabbling and wasn’t sure whether they were angry with one another, and yes, Otabek had just jumped out of a moving vehicle and limped into the shop, but they were probably at least 75% okay-

Yurio abruptly shouted a couple of choice words in Russian that Yuuri didn’t know the meaning of, but Viktor’s response (another sharp “YuriO!”) made it fairly easy to guess.

“Fucking shit! Fuck!” Yurio switched to English.

“What?!” Viktor demanded.

“The seat is wet!”

Viktor sighed and slumped again.

“Well, it was nice knowing Otabek, because he’s never going to speak to us again,” Yuuri said.

“No, we can fix this, worse things have happened,” Viktor said.

“I stuck my hand in it, can we fix that first?”

Yuuri’s eyes lit up and he instantly produced a packet of wet wipes from his pocket, to Viktor’s amusement.

“I told you I don’t carry them around for no reason,” he smirked as he heroically distributed a wet wipe to Yurio.

Annoyed at both the situation and Viktor and Yuuri’s giggling at their inside joke, Yurio cleaned off his hand to his liking and threw the wipe on the floor.

“Do you think we should give Otabek a few minutes before we go in there?” Yuuri asked.

“Fuck that, I'm not spending any more time in here,” Yurio said, hopping out of the car and slamming the door behind him.

“Alright. So, what should we do about-” Yuuri started to say to Viktor, but within a couple of seconds, Yurio had opened the passenger door, blasting sleet into the car.

“You guys, just one quick question. You have to help me. How do you comfort someone?”

“Shut the door, you can figure it out!”

-

Reality had come back into focus for Otabek and the aftermath of the last hour was still unfortunately, ultimately real. All around him he could hear the milling around of other travellers making use of the stop after being caught in the traffic delay, and here he was in the middle of it sitting in a toilet cubicle, trapped, until somebody came to help him and he’d have to accept. Through the gap under the door, he saw a familiar pair of leopard shoes come in and pause for a second. They turned on their heels and trotted to the other side of the room, giving him another minute to mentally prepare for the questioning, but he’d been found.

Otabek nearly brought his hands to his face but caught himself when he remembered they were covered in piss, just like his phone and the rest of the contents of his pockets, and, well, every surface he’d touched in his scramble to get into the cubicle and lock the door. He sighed in frustration, and to his own surprise and embarrassment, peed another long stream he hadn’t known was still left into the toilet. When he’d finally shoved his wet clothes down in front of the toilet a few minutes earlier, he’d found that he’d overworked his muscles into an inability to relax and was shivering too hard in distress to aim. He’d had to sit down, go limp against the wall and let gravity drain the pressure out of him at the same trickling rate it had been emptying into his clothes on his way inside and it had taken a minute to feel any relief at all.

The loud leopard shoes returned and stopped outside the cubicle.

“Whatever you’re going to say, say it,” Otabek braced himself. He heard Yurio take a deep breath.

“Viktor says this isn’t the worst thing that’s ever happened.”

Despite the situation, Otabek was caught off-guard by amusement at such a backhanded consolation and made an awkward sputter.

“Are you crying?”

“No, I’m laughing. Did Viktor actually say that? Holy shit.”

“Well, he might not have- I can’t remember exactly how he- you know what I meant. Er, he meant. You know in a minute he’ll be in here telling you all sorts of TMI things that have happened to him and everyone we know, whether you want to hear or not. It’s what he does.”

“Can’t wait.”

“Anyway, like…” Yurio’s voice faltered and his shoes shuffled. “I’m really sorry I embarrassed you and drew attention to you. It’s just that you’ve stuck up for me enough times that I kinda wanted to do the same thing. I just didn’t think about whether I could actually do anything, and I should have.”

“Yeah… that’s what I thought. I guess I should be flattered that you thought about it that way. Don’t worry about it, I would have managed to embarrass and draw attention to myself anyway.”

“Man, I haven’t even asked if you need help. I don’t know what I’m doing. How bad is it? Do I need to go get you anything, you know, like, to clean up?”

“A can of gas and a match should do it.”

“Haha, makes sense. But I’ll go see if- oh, there you are,” Yurio said to someone else. “He’s in there.”

“Otabek, we brought you some things,” Viktor’s voice came from outside the door. Viktor pushed Otabek’s clothes bag through the gap under the door, and Yuuri reached in and set a packet of wet wipes on top of it.

“Ah. Thanks?”

“Rinse everything that needs it in the sink, and you can wash them properly when we arrive,” Viktor said as if he’d talked others through the same situation a hundred times.

“I’m going to wait in the cafe, want me to get you anything?” Yurio said, then quickly added “Don’t say something sarcastic.”

“Green tea, don’t take the bag out before I get there. I wasn’t going to.”

The thought of everyone asking him if he needed anything and giving him wet wipes was too overwhelming. The logistics of stripping from the waist down in a public toilet standing on one’s own shoes trying not to touch the floor were too undignified. Otabek felt transported to being an incompetent, high-maintenance child, which finally made him uncontrollably tear up, to add insult to injury. He fumbled through the rest of his cleanup operation and emerged disheveled, red-faced and less motivated than ever to go face his friends he was stuck with, and this was how Viktor found him.

“Is everything okay?” Viktor asked.

Otabek looked down at the clothes he was rinsing in the sink, then back up at Viktor blankly.

“Stupid question?” Viktor admitted.

“You didn’t have to come and check on me,” Otabek said, his voice coming out much more pathetic than he intended. “What do I need to do about the seat?”

“Leather wipes off easily if you catch it fast. I can take a closer look when we get there, but it’s probably taken care of,” Viktor said. “I know you’re about to tell me I shouldn’t have done that either, but we thought you already had enough on your plate.”

Otabek cringed, shook his head and looked down.

“I’m not telling you this out of pity for you personally - I can’t just not try to help another skater when something bad happens to them, it’s practically code,” Viktor smiled. “Sometimes I think these kinds of mishaps are even worse for us than for most people. At some point, you’re inevitably going to do something like fall down the stairs carrying a bowl of oatmeal, or throw up under the table during a press conference, or wet yourself. And not only does it make you feel like a basic failure of a human being for a while, it makes you wonder why you couldn’t make your body do what you wanted it to just this once, when you make it do more complicated things all the time.”

“Such are the pitfalls of inhabiting a physical form,” Otabek agreed with a smirk.

“Ugh, Yuuri jokes about that all the time, can’t you have a little more respect for yourselves?” Viktor laughed. “Please tell me you don’t call it a ‘flesh prison.’”

“No, but nice, I’ll add that one to my vocabulary.”

“I guess that is what I meant, though. Heh, do you want to know the most awkward thing that happened to me with Chris a few years ago on a flight to-”

“Not particularly, sorry.”

“Oh. Well, that’s okay. The same things can’t make everyone feel better. Can I give you a hug, or is that out of the question?”

“…I’m not saying never, but not right now.”

“Fair enough. What about getting back on the road and trying to have a normal rest of our journey?”

“That sounds like the best idea.”

-

“So anyway, I’m just standing there running my mouth like a fucking idiot. Like an insignificant little fly,” Yurio said.

“Viktor is coming back, watch your language,” Yuuri warned. “But I know how you feel, that happens to me all the time.”

“Are you saying-” Yurio slammed down his sugary latte so hard a splash jumped out of the cup onto the table before he heeded the warning and cut off his sentence. He looked over his shoulder and gave a casual nod to Viktor and Otabek. Viktor looked up from the conversation they were having and waved, but the two continued outside. After being sure they had gone out to the car, Yurio leaned toward Yuuri and lowered his voice.

“I don’t know why I’m surprised, I mean, it is you I’m talking to,” he continued, “but what do you mean it happens to you all the time? Are you saying it doesn’t ever get any easier? You know, to… ugh, this is so stupid, please don’t ever tell anyone I said this… to… be there? For your friends?”

“I’m saying it’s always hard to know what to do when something happens to your friend and they’re upset, and you’ll probably always say the wrong thing and feel like an idiot,” Yuuri explained. He pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose and became contemplative. “But lately I’ve started to realize that maybe, if you care about your friend and want them to be okay, and they’re really your friend, they’ll understand what you meant and they won’t think you’re an idiot, even if you do?”

Yurio peered over the rim of his latte incredulously.

“And sometimes, your friend doesn’t actually want you to say anything about the thing they’re upset about, and the only way to cheer them up is just by talking to them like your usual self. That’s usually the safest bet if you’re not sure.”

“Oh, well, no shit. Why didn’t you tell me that part first?”

“Did you get me anything?” Viktor snuck up on Yuuri and slid into the seat next to him. Yuuri handed him a small coffee without missing a beat. Close behind, Otabek sat down and examined the offering the two Yuris had set up for him, a cup of tea with a waffle balanced on top to keep it warm.

“I like that waffle vending machine. I think it’s neat,” Yuuri explained.

“That’s probably the best statement anyone has made in the history of Russia-Japan relations,” Otabek said, delicately picking up the corner of the now-soggy confection.

“Beka, we just had an argument. You’re the only guy who can break the tie,” Yurio said.

“Oh really.”

“Not really, but I don’t trust Viktor to give me a fair answer.” Yurio peeled the waffle open and pointed at the filling. “What is this?”

“It’s condensed milk.”

“It’s not caramel?”

“No?”

“Oh my god. They’re talking about the caramel,” Yuuri said frantically to Viktor. “I don’t know what I said wrong.”

“Condensed milk! That’s it!” Yurio said so excitedly that he hit the table as he waved a Google Translate result in Yuuri’s face.

“Everyone. Don’t panic. Wikipedia says it has a caramel flavor, nobody is wrong,” Otabek said.

“Wikipedia can eat my entire-”

“Yurio, it’s just a linguistic difference,” Viktor said with infinite patience. “Why don’t you two look up something useful, like which sushi restaurant is open the latest?”

“You’re right. Let’s get back on schedule and I’ll find out once we’re on the road.” Otabek grabbed his tea, spun around and walked away, the other three jumping up to catch up.

“Okay, but we’re not in a hurry, we can probably get there any time before eleven or midnight and still find takeout to bring to Mila’s place,” Viktor said.

“So what you’re saying is, let’s not get frustrated if we have to go slowly, or if it’s too stressful and we need to take another break?” Yuuri suggested cautiously.

“Of course, I know it’s already been a long day, but let’s put our safety first.” The four of them filed outside into the sleet. “Hey, I don’t think it’s hailing anymore!”

“Only you could go outside in this and find something positive to say,” Yuuri laughed.

“What we’re talking about still stands, though, I’d prefer to steer clear of any more acts of nature.”

Otabek knew what Viktor meant, but the phrasing still made him blush.


End file.
